Bake Sale Results, Cheese-Off, and a Helena Pop-Up

May 9, 2014 by arfoodie 2 Comments

Arkansas Blogger Bake Sale Results

I am happy to report that, as of this writing, we are hovering around the $2,600 mark for this year’s Arkansas Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry!

While we’re a little shy of our $3,000 goal, it’s still a great haul, and it’s more than we raised last year. Many, many thanks to our committee members, volunteers, bakers, donors and everyone involved!

If you’d still like to help, I’m not closing our sale until next Friday, May 16. You can donate cash directly to No Kid Hungry at this link, and it will credit to our fundraiser. Share with your friends and co-workers!

(One day soon I’ll tell the side-story for that day…short version: I stepped out for a couple hours to hang out with MC Hammer, for business reasons.)

Get Cheesed Off: Pimento Cheese Competition and Tasting

While at the sale, the PR Maven at Historic Arkansas Museum dropped by to pick up some goodies and tell us about some goings on this weekend. Every year, the day before Mother’s Day, the museum holds an awesome event, the Territorial Fair. (Seriously, if you have kids — or even if you don’t — you have to go!)

This year, they are adding an even more savory element: A pimento cheese competition. Oh my word.

Competitors include Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro, Hillcrest Artisan Meats and Capital Hotel Bar and Grill. Visitors to the Territorial Fair can sample all the pimento cheese entries from 1 to 4 p.m., voting for a People’s Choice award to be given at the end of the day.

The Territorial Fair and the Pimento Cheese-Off are free. Historic Arkansas Museum is located at 200 E. Third Street in Little Rock.

The original Interstate Grocery, which was the first sponsor of the King Biscuit Time radio show. This storefront will be the location of tomorrow night’s pop-up.

It’s Sold Out, And It’s So Cool: “Interstate Grocery” Pop-Up in Helena

Saturday night, Helena will host what’s likely one of the hottest culinary tickets in the state, a night with Chefs Shane Henderson and Jason Godwin. Henderson is currently a chef with food wholesaler Ben E. Keith (but you probably remember him as the opening chef for Argenta Market), and Godwin has experience in catering and restaurants, best known as the chef proprietor of Dogtown Coffee and Cookery.

They’ll serve four courses of Delta-centric delights at this sold-out event, meant to highlight not only the foods of the region, but also the success a similar permanent restaurant might enjoy in the area. Tickets were $30.

Julia Malinowski, director of the Helena Advertising and Promotion Commission, hopes the event will bring attention to the city’s potential for a “date night” type restaurant.

“Many of our residents are traveling 45 minutes to Greenville (Miss.), where investors have opened up opportunities for several restaurants to open,” she said. “We have some people willing to invest right here in Helena in a great restaurant if just the right person comes along.”

While it’s too late to join the party this Saturday, it’s pretty much a done deal that there will be more. Watch this space for details (with more notice next time, my bad) on future events.

Save the Date: 2014 Arkansas Blogger Bake Sale is Coming!

March 13, 2014 by arfoodie 1 Comment

Arkansas Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry
Saturday, May 3, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.+
6th and Main, North Little Rock
(Next to the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market)

Click here to bake or volunteer

************************

Hey friends,

I see from my search terms that some of you are looking for details about the upcoming Arkansas Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry! So, I suppose it’s time to tell you what’s up for 2014. (First note: You may have noticed that the word “Food” is missing from the formerly-Food-Blogger-Bake-Sale. This came from the No Kid Hungry national folks, as to involve more non-food bloggers, which we did anyways.)

Background

If you’re unfamiliar, No Kid Hungry is a national nonprofit with several programs that fight childhood hunger in the United States. I’ve been a part of one of them, Cooking Matters, which teaches lower-income families about nutrition and basic cooking skills. Our books, program materials and much of the food were made possible by bake sales just like this one. Bake sales make a difference!

Event Details

This year’s bake sale is Saturday, May 3, at our same location at the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market, 6th and Main in North Little Rock. The hours will be at least 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but we’re thinking about extending them to catch more folks going to another event in the area later that day.

New this year: a crafting/tag-making/decor prepping party for those of you who can’t bake your way out of a Ziplock bag. (Ha! Or even if you can…) That will be on April 12, 3 – 6 p.m. (will send address to RSVPs). We’ll make tags for the baked goods, thank-you cards for donors, crafty items for the auction and some decor for the bake sale itself.

Bigger and better this year: an online silent auction for larger baked goods and even non-food goods and services donated by area businesses. Check it out here in coming weeks.

How to Help

Open this Google doc and fill in whatever you think you might be able to do or provide. It’s okay if the details are sketchy right now. 🙂 The possibilities include:

Bake items for the sale (both individuals and professionals)
Help during the sale
Donate items for the pre-sale auction (doesn’t have to be food)
Attend the crafting/tag-making party

You can also just help us promote the sale itself on your own social channels. Please tag our Facebook page as well as No Kid Hungry’s Facebook or Twitter.

THANK YOU, and watch the Facebook page and our bake sale website for more details!

A Place at the Table: Special Screening Event in Little Rock on June 6

May 21, 2013 by arfoodie Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to be food insecure?

Ever get into a discussion about public policy that affects nutrition assistance programs?

Did you ever want to do understand more, and thereby do more?

On Thursday, June 6, the Market Street Cinema in Little Rock will screen A Place at the Table, an acclaimed documentary directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush that has revealed the reality of hunger to many, through the eyes of three people who are unsure just where their next meal might come from. The documentary has received praise for its poignant look at this difficult issue, cutting through politics and rhetoric to expose the reality of living day to day with hunger.

The screening is free, and you will have the opportunity to contribute to the Arkansas No Kid Hungry campaign to help end hunger in our state.

Seating is limited to the first 200 people, so please RSVP by email here with the subject line “TABLE.” This will reserve your seats for the screening and the Q&A discussion of hunger in Arkansas that follows.

The event was organized by the Department of Human Services Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education Health & Nutrition Unit, the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance and the Arkansas No Kid Hungry Campaign.

Event Details:

A Place at the Table Screening
Thursday, June 6
Doors open at 6pm; film begins at 7pm
Market Street Cinema, off Rodney Parham on Merrill Drive
RSVP requested

Arkansas Food Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry Wrap-Up (Photos)

May 6, 2013 by arfoodie 8 Comments

Beautiful setup by Gina Knuppenburg and Amanda Potter Cole, and many other workers. I can’t thank you enough.

I’m still exhausted, two days later.

But it was totally worth it.

The Arkansas Food Blogger Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry, our third annual, was a huge success! I’ll report a total at the end of the week, but I do know that we have reached our goal of $2,000 this year, DOUBLING what we had made in each of our first two years doing the sale here in Arkansas. So exciting!

Many thanks to the bloggers who wrote, baked and donated, as well as the professional bakers who sent their wares and a handful of non-blogger good souls who just sent things because they cared. And a special thanks to the awesome folks who decorated and handled the crowds on Saturday at the sale itself!

Meanwhile, my competitive spirit is still fired up. I’m not sure what all the sales across the country have made, but I know we’re in the top tier. Duncan Hines is donating an extra $10,000 on behalf of the bake sale with the biggest total… It could be Arkansas!

So, if you didn’t get to participate, I encourage you to donate funds directly here. Funds donated at this link will be credited to our Arkansas bake sale. (The totals are wonky because most of it is in cash from the sale, locked away in a safe at my house until Friday.)

Oh, and one more thing: Those of us on the Twitters wondered why we didn’t see the national buzz very well. Turns out all the sales didn’t use the assigned #FBBakeSale hashtag (tsk tsk), but did their own. Check out #SDFBBakeSale, #CFLFBBakeSale, #SFBakeSale and #NYCBakeSale for what other folks did across the country.

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you! That’s from the bottom of my heart, and from all the kids and families who will benefit from your hard work. Thank you.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Arkansas Food Blogger Bake Sale 2013

March 25, 2013 by arfoodie 1 Comment

UPDATE: Check here for a list of donated goodies and participating bloggers and professionals!

It’s time again! Bloggers across the U.S. are gearing up for this year’s Food Blogger Bake Sale, which will be held on Saturday, May 4. This annual event raises money for the No Kid Hungry program of Share Our Strength, an organization near and dear to my heart that fights childhood hunger in a bunch of cool ways. Again, our Arkansas event will be held at 7th and Main in North Little Rock, adjacent to the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

One of the ways No Kid Hungry fights hunger is through the Cooking Matters classes that I currently have the privilege to teach. Grants pay for books, the food and equipment we use, etc. And guess where that grant money comes from? Fundraisers like this one. And I can tell you, just from this one program, it changes lives. (For the record, I am not paid from any of these funds for teaching the classes.)

This year, we’ve officially partnered up with Arkansas Women Bloggers and the Arkansas Food Blogger Network. Keep an eye on these two sites in coming weeks; we’re working on some pre-sale auctions and contests to raise the bar even higher. Overall, we’re looking to raise at least $2,000 this year, doubling what we raised last year.

We need help in three ways, so let me know what you can do:

1. Write about the sale. Bloggers, media, community newsletters, office emails. Get the word out! I can email you the “official flack” in the form of a news advisory, and later on, a full release as more donors are identified.

2. Bake something for the sale. Email me and let me know you’d like to participate, and I’ll send you the details. Basically, we’re looking for three dozen of something, which is negotiable. Clear packaging. Cute tags if you’re willing/able. We will price on site, so just list what it is, your name and your URL/business.

3. Buy stuff at the sale, or donate cash. Get thee to the event on May 4 and buy lots of stuff! But if you can’t make it, or can’t eat treats, or whatever, you can donate money directly here. Soon you can buy a “virtual cupcake” to post on your blog or Facebook.

I hope you’ll hear more about No Kid Hungry and the Arkansas Food Blogger Bake Sale from many of my blogger friends in the coming weeks.

Feeding Arkansas’ Hungry Kids, One Celeb Chef at a Time (No Kid Hungry Little Rock Dinner 2012)

August 1, 2012 by arfoodie Leave a Comment

Lovely table settings by Share Our Strength staff and volunteers.

Tuesday night, Governor Mike Beebe told a sold-out crowd at the Oxford American headquarters that Arkansas has become a success “poster child” for the No Kid Hungry program of Share Our Strength, the nonprofit group working to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. And based on the results of the event, raising over $30 thousand with a night of spectacular culinary achievement, I am not at all surprised.

The local chef rock stars who cooked for the event included Jeffrey Owen of the Capitol Hotel, Brian Deloney of Maddie’s Place, Kelli Marks of Sweet Love and a host of rising-star culinarians and other volunteers. The out-of-towners included two Top Chef graduates: John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss. (Top Chef Masters, season 3) and Marcel Vigneron of Modern Global Tasting Inc. in Los Angeles (Top Chef, season 2).

Share Our Strength is holding other No Kid Hungry Dinners across the country to raise funds for their worthy programs, including the Cooking Matters program I had the privilege to teach this summer. The secondary purpose, however, is to create a buzz, getting folks together who love to cook, love to eat and love to make sure our kids have the opportunity to do both.

Behind the scenes was an absolute hoot. The best thing about being one of those up-and-coming culinary types is being able to schlep into these things as extra hands, learning from everyone there. I was able to help plate dishes, wipe other dishes down (the rental company didn’t send them all clean!), even deliver dishes to the waiting crowd of about 120 guests.

I absolutely loved watching the chefs prepare their dishes. Each chef, from the locals to the guest chefs, had something extraordinary to offer. As I watched Vigneron finish his plates of pea soup with peas, salmon, beets, beet ice cream and a beet chip, I was astounded by the level of mastery. And, honestly, at that point in the evening I hadn’t even realized why he looked so darn familiar! (I’ll tell you this: His jerk persona on Top Chef was all editing. He’s a doll.)

The other chefs all brought their own passions, as well. Currence was especially passionate about the Cooking Matters program, telling me about the Chefs Move to Schools kickoff event he helped cook for at the White House earlier this year. He said it was essential that we work to get kids excited about healthy cooking, just as previous generations of kids were the family catalysts for litter control and recycling.

Our own local chefs created amazing dishes, as well. Owen’s cocktail-hour appetizers reflected the precision and depth of flavor that embodies the Capitol Hotel. Deloney presented the first course, a “muffaletta” napoleon of heirloom tomatoes, showcasing the beauty of fresh, seasonal ingredients. Newcomer Kelli Marks astounded the seasoned veterans with her light, perfectly balanced cheesecakes. (Vigneron loved them.) And without credit on the program, former Argenta Market chef Shane Henderson, now with Ben E. Keith, prepared beautiful vegetarian entrees on the fly for those who requested them.

Before the event even got rolling, the former-PR-person in me had to go work the crowd during cocktail hour. Turns out I walked by just as P. Allen Smith was walking in, as he was one of the guest speakers for the event. Bless his heart, the awesome ladies who came in from Share Our Strength in Washington, D.C. didn’t know who he was! I helped them all alleviate the situation without anybody getting embarrassed. My reward: Soiree and the Dem-Gaz snapping photos of me with said Mr. Smith. The white coat, they love it, even if I’m a nobody.

I may write a separate post about just hanging out with these awesome folks all evening. It’s a story unto itself. But, for now, enjoy these photos knowing that we’re this much closer to No Kid Hungry in Arkansas.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Cooking — Why it Matters (Share Our Strength/No Kid Hungry event July 31)

July 9, 2012 by arfoodie Leave a Comment

For the past month, I’ve traveled over to the Arkansas Foodbank every Friday afternoon to teach a super-awesome group of folks how to cook.

The program is called Cooking Matters, a program of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign. The goal is to help lower-income families learn to shop, cook and eat in a way that is affordable and healthy.

As is often the case with such things, I think I’ve gotten more out of it than the students have. But that’s not to say they aren’t learning, too. Each week, several participants have a “eureka” moment when they realize they like brown rice, they like the taste of foods with less salt, or they actually enjoy broccoli.

Cooking Matters is fairly new in Arkansas, only having had a few classes over the past two years as they geared up through the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. Mine is the first to use the “Families” curriculum, meaning we have kids and adults cooking and learning together. Now, local coordinators are seeking out new locations and instructors to place classes all over the state.

Each week, we get settled into our “kitchen” (some classes are taught in an actual kitchen, while others, like this one, are done in a meeting room) and begin with a lesson from a nutritionist. (Last week’s demonstrated the amount of fat in a fast-food meal by putting equivalent amounts of Crisco on a bun. Several haven’t had fast food since!) Then, we review topics such as knife skills, food safety or the like, and then we go over the recipe for the day.

Then it gets crazy! The room buzzes with the happy madness of several families cooking at once. I demonstrate each step from my station, and then sometimes walk around to help the students complete it. When we’re done, we all gather together at a large table, demonstrating the importance of eating together as a family. Here, we try each others’ dishes, talk about the lesson, laugh, learn from each others’ lives. Then I close with a challenge for the next week, such as choosing healthy ingredients or limiting fast food.

I’m writing this now to tell you how you can help. I’ve seen firsthand how lives are changed. Not only do I hope the program becomes funded for expansion, I want you to feel the happiness of knowing you’ve changed lives for the better — with cooking.

On Tuesday, July 31, Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign is holding a fundraiser event at The Oxford American that is a must-attend. The funds will stay in the state to fund Cooking Matters, as well as to help increase participation in existing programs such as WIC, SNAP and summer feeding programs. (For more info on why, read this; many hungry Arkansas kids don’t take advantage of the help that’s available.)

I seriously hope you’ll take action today to make sure you’ll be there. Tickets are $150 each, with table sponsorships available for $1,500. Ask your employer to participate, especially if you’re in the food industry.

The No Kid Hungry Dinner will be hosted by Chef Donnie Ferneau (Rocket 21) and will showcase the talents of some of Little Rock’s best chefs, including Brian DeLoney (Maddie’s Place) and Kelli Marks (Sweet Love), as well as visiting chefs John Currence (City Grocery, Oxford, MS) and Marcel Vigneron (Modern Global Tasting Inc., Los Angeles, CA).

You can buy tickets online or get more information about the event here.

P.S. Chef Donnie Ferneau has approved my schlepping in the kitchen for the event, so I’ll be live-blogging (or after-the-fact blogging, depending on how busy he keeps me) the whole thing, from the perspective of the chefs! Stay tuned.

Fancy Pants Foodie

Foodie news, reviews and how-tos from Arkansas and beyond.

A Place at the Table: Special Screening Event in Little Rock on June 6